


Parallels

by days4daisy



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Bandaging wounds, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s01e07 Possession, Extra Treat, M/M, References to Minor Character Death, Season/Series 01, Sir Malcolm's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/pseuds/days4daisy
Summary: Ethan does not leave the Murray house after dispelling the Devil from Vanessa. Sir Malcolm sees to what remains.
Relationships: Ethan Chandler/Sir Malcolm Murray
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Parallels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).



The door to Miss Ives’ bedroom flies open. Mister Chandler stalks out, shoulders squared and glaring straight ahead. He looks to be letting that temper of his get the better of him yet again. Instead of throwing fists, he scoops his hat and trench coat from an otherwise vacant chair and marches to the stairs. Past a staring Sembene and Victor. Past the father wallowing in his newfound deformity on the steps.

Malcolm watches his descent and hears the sound of a door, then returns to the bedroom. It is dark inside, but the shadows do not hold the malice they have of late. Vanessa curls on the bed, benign as a sleeping child. There is something different about her. Even in sleep, she has a smile on her face.

Malcolm closes her door with care and passes Sembene and Victor on his way downstairs.

The door Malcolm heard, it seems, was not the front but the one to the sitting room. The hearth was lit earlier in the evening, and its warmth touches Malcolm from the entryway. He walks in with slow, quiet steps.

Malcolm has to circle the sofa to see Ethan curled up on the cushions. He wears his trench coat like a blanket, hat deposited on an arm of the sofa. Malcolm knows Ethan does not sleep by his short breaths. But his eyes are closed, a tense fold between them.

Movement by the door. It’s Sembene, hovering between rooms as Vanessa hovered between this life and the next. He looks from Malcolm to the hunched form of Ethan on the love seat. With no visible reaction, he eases the door shut. They are alone. The sitting room is bright and warm, the fire’s heat sinking through the back of Malcolm’s shirt.

It is strange to look down on Ethan from this angle, robust as he is. He drew Malcolm’s eye from the start, stoked the flames of desire for a return trip abroad. Malcolm’s Nile fever was reignited through Ethan, and plans set aside were suddenly close enough to taste.

Malcom cannot help but see Vanessa mirrored in Ethan’s discomfort. The bunched knees of an awkward child that has outgrown its youth.

He spots threads of red on Ethan’s hand. Blood, he realizes, spun around Ethan's thumb like ribbons.

With a sigh, Malcolm crosses to his liquor cabinet. The sitting room is immaculate now, as pristine as that of a new manor owner. It took Sembene and himself hours to clean the mess made by Vanessa, or the party which saw fit to influence her. There was broken glass and books strewn about. Scratched tables and torn papers, but blessedly not a drop of wasted spirit.

Malcolm pours two glasses of his best scotch. He sips from one and returns to the love seat with the other. Ethan cracks eyes open when Malcolm extends the glass to him. His gaze has an uncertain glassiness to it. When Ethan meets Malcolm's stare, he looks relieved. A faint twitch of tired lips that affects Malcolm in ways he does not expect.

“You look to need this more than me,” Malcolm says, “but I helped myself anyway.”

Ethan sits up with a grunt, and the coat falls from his shoulders. He cannot quite straighten himself all the way. Something forbids him, around the midsection if Malcolm reads him right. This restriction seems of greater concern to Ethan than his thumb. He reaches his dripping hand out like he has no idea he’s injured it. Given the unnatural shine to Ethan’s eyes, he likely doesn’t.

“You’ve cut yourself,” Malcolm says. It strikes him only after he’s gone to retrieve his stored medical kit that he has not hailed Sembene to assist.

Ethan snorts but does not complain, hand extended like a child caught stealing sweets. Peter on occasion succumbed to such temptations, as did Mina. Malcolm shooed them off to bed when he caught them. Funny, it’s only now that he wonders why he was so lax with them in some moments but strict in countless others.

Ethan’s thumb looks burned. Or...no. It looks branded. A familiar pattern marks Ethan’s skin, though Malcolm cannot place it. Something reminiscent of the stained glass workmanship in a cathedral. Malcolm looks from it to Ethan, who turns away as if embarrassed. He looks solemn and weary, both striking on features normally full of far more life.

Malcolm takes Ethan’s hand. Strong though Ethan is, his fingers hang limp in Malcolm’s grasp. He is pliant when Malcolm turns his hand, exposing the palm and the full damage to his thumb. Ethan offers no complaint when Malcolm applies the disinfectant, the only evidence of its effect a minute wince.

“If I ask what happened, will you tell me?” Malcolm asks.

Ethan’s mouth twitches again. “No,” he replies.

Not an unexpected answer, and Malcolm shakes his head. “In that case, I won’t waste my breath,” he says.

Bandaging the wound is quick work for one with Malcolm’s field experience. Ethan sits quietly and lets Malcolm work. When Malcolm finishes, Ethan takes the offered glass of spirit and downs it in a single gulp.

Without comment, Malcolm rises to fetch him a refill. “You’re favoring your ribs," he says instead. "Let’s have a look.”

The scoff that puffs from Ethan is too sharp to be friendly. “Thought I told you,” he mumbles, “I’ve already got a father.”

“And he did this for you often, did he?” Malcolm asks. Even he does not know what he means by the question. Has an odd injury of this kind found Ethan before? Or, was Ethan’s father a good man who took care of his son? A man unlike Malcolm himself?

Ethan’s head snaps towards Malcolm as if struck. He sits stunned and silent, lips parted and eyes glassy. A different kind of pain, Malcolm suspects.

Ethan peels his blouse from his shoulders, a flutter of tension at his jaw. His chest is like a statue and white as the snow blanketing the streets of London.

Ethan’s ribs tell a different tale. They have been clawed at by some beast, a succession of bloody crosses fenced one over the other. The bleeding marks lie over skin bruised purple and blue. Miss Ives must have - but no, it seems unlikely if not impossible. The marks are precise, as if drawn with the sharpest point of a knife. Human nails would be far less refined.

“I’ll do it,” Ethan mumbles. He holds out his hand for the towel and disinfectant.

Malcolm sits on the edge of the love seat and does not give either away. Ethan downs the contents of his second glass of scotch and sets it on the floor with an awkward clank.

With a wary glance at Malcolm, Ethan shifts to his back, knees bunched up to allow Malcolm room. Despite the circumstances, warmth spikes through Malcolm’s stomach. Ethan is as beautiful as he is strong. Malcolm thought so from the moment he laid eyes on the American at their first rendezvous. A charmer no doubt, Malcolm assumed then. Rugged and popular with that little twang to his voice.

Appearances have proven to be deceiving in this regard. And it is not as if one can ignore the facts learned in the uncomfortable company of Vanessa’s demon. _Did you fuck him, or did he fuck you._ An unexpected turn of events.

Ethan blows out a breath and turns glossy eyes up at Malcolm. The weariness in them, the pain, sets off an unwelcome churn in Malcolm’s gut. “Lie still,” he says.

Ethan’s ribs are far more sensitive than his hand. At the first touch of alcohol, even Ethan, stoic as he is, grunts and squirms on the couch. His eyes crunch to a close, discomfort tight across his face. He’s breathing faster, and under Malcolm’s hands his broken skin puffs an angry pink. The towel matches shade, stained by Ethan's blood.

Even now, Ethan fights for the quiet pride he wears as a second skin. He bites his lip against his own hissed breaths and blinks tension from his hazy eyes. His head tips back far enough that Malcolm can’t make out his full expression. All while offering his wounded body though the slightest touch is clearly agonizing. It’s as a man of Ethan’s esteem should behave, a man of Ethan’s well-honed skills and worth.

Peter was skin and bones at the end, one strong wind away from turning to dust. He shied from Malcolm’s touch at the end, and he cried. Oh, how he cried. Pitiful begging from chapped lips, skin stained by swelling mosquito bites. He was not like Ethan at all.

It’s a horrible thought, and it shames Malcolm though he knows it to be true. Perhaps this is the start of something, that Malcolm will claim a comparison so heinous. Not peddle the thought away to whatever excuse sounds most convenient at the time.

With an awkward stutter, Malcolm mumbles, “It’s alright- if the pain is great, I mean. It’s alright to give a voice to it.”

Ethan barks an unsteady laugh. “Maybe you’re not like my dad after all.”

Malcolm shakes his head. On the contrary, it seems that he and this mysterious father figure have far too much in common.

“Sit up,” Malcolm says. “Easy now. It will hurt, but it’s necessary.”

Ethan nods, never questioning. He shakes as he rises, new tension knotted through his shoulders. The cross marks on his ribs shine with new blood. Malcolm dabs at them again without requesting permission. Ethan does not berate Malcolm for taking advantage.

Somewhere in this past nightmarish week, decorum seems to have fled the Murray house. They have screamed at each other, put hands on one another, leveled accusations, and murmured hard truths.

Likewise, Ethan’s scars are now Malcolm's to touch without permission. But Malcolm shows Ethan the bandages and tape. Ethan nods. Their silent contract is made.

Malcolm makes himself the mobile party. As he unwinds the gauze, he steps around Ethan’s hunched form. Ethan keeps his head lowered while Malcolm works. He hides behind a curtain of his own hair, and it is with great restraint that Malcolm does not sweep it away. Ethan’s body, though torn, is hard under his hands.

“I’ll get up,” Ethan mumbles. Exhaustion slurs his words.

Malcolm holds out a hand to stop him. “This will do,” he says.

To prove himself, he unwinds the bandage roll further and steps around the sofa. With Ethan hunched off the cushion, Malcolm has room to wrap the gauze along his back. Odd how pristine this expanse is when compared to the massacre up front. Not a single bruise blemishes Ethan’s back. Malcolm allows himself to move faster.

“There now,” Malcolm says, hand set between Ethan’s shoulders. “How do you feel?”

“That a trick question?” Ethan asks. He manages one of his half-smiles; it is an encouraging sign. “Like fresh shit. But better. Thanks.”

Malcolm nods, “Can’t be helped, I suppose.” His hand still sits on Ethan’s back.

He allows himself a flex of fingers, the slightest comb of Ethan’s skin. Warm and smooth under his touch. There can be no harm in allowing a wandering spirit one fleeting moment of fancy.

Ethan blinks up at Malcolm, a flutter of lashes, involuntary response. Malcolm hones in. “You need rest,” Malcolm tells him.

Ethan concedes with a shrug. “What I was doing before you came in here after me.”

“Real rest,” Malcolm amends. He knows by Ethan’s snort what he’s thinking, the twinkle in his eyes that of the son who revels in riling his father. The thought warms Malcolm, though he knows it should not. Not when his hand still rests on Ethan’s naked back. “The spare room you’ve kept this week will be yours still, should you have need of it.”

“I’ve got a place of my own,” Ethan says. There is no fire in the statement, none of Ethan’s trademark temper. It’s a protest he has to make, playing his role as faithfully as a stage actor.

“And it will still be there tomorrow,” Malcolm replies, “but not tonight.”

The remark earns raised brows and a chuckle. “My place tonight is where you tell me it is, is that right?”

 _Yes._ The thought fills Malcolm’s consciousness with the crooning sweetness of a lover. He will not speak it, but his fingers launch a new expedition. Slide into Ethan’s hair and curl so his knuckles fit to the base of Ethan’s scalp.

The look comes again, a slow blink of dark eyes losing even more of their focus. Ethan’s breath slides out in a long trail. “You sure the spare room’s where you want me?” Ethan asks.

How forward, but Malcolm cannot say he disapproves. It has been some time since he’s had a challenge. In strength Ethan has proven himself to be every bit the romanticized Westerner. But he is a challenge in thought too, in words, in philosophy. Malcolm cannot say he anticipated it, but he likes it, though they have fought. And what he likes, he tends to covet. Turn into an addiction like the hidden bruises inside Doctor Frankenstein’s elbow.

Something makes Malcolm purse his lips. He slides his hand from Ethan’s hair and lets it linger again between his shoulder blades. “I want you where sleep will find you easiest,” he says.

Ethan’s eyes widen. He frowns, confusion plain. Then, he looks back up and Malcolm.

Again, the start of a smile. “The spare room then,” Ethan says. “Tonight at least.” The implication warms Malcolm even in the dead of London winter.

“In that case, to bed with you,” Malcolm says. The earlier to bed on this night, the quicker to see what tomorrow will bring.


End file.
